Activating Agency as a Pathway to Economic Empowerment

We were very excited to find this graphic in “The Gates Foundation Gender Equality Strategy”. Why? Because it reflects so well what IMAGO has learned over the past 4 years working with grassroots organizations and self-help groups in the field. This work has solidified our vision of turning development practices upside-down through the “activation” of the agency of women as central to economic empowerment. When women become the architects of their own lives, everything else changes. There is greater equality at both the household level and within the organizations that women work with. There is reduced poverty as they organize to build livelihoods based on the assets around them. The impact cuts across generations as women are usually the main caregivers of both the children and the elderly.